


A Story of Names

by keerawa



Series: These are the Stories We Tell Ourselves [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Crossover, Fae & Fairies, Fairy Tales, Gen, Names, POV First Person, POV Multiple, POV Original Character, POV Third Person Limited, Reincarnation, Storytelling, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-23
Updated: 2012-09-28
Packaged: 2017-11-14 21:48:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/519858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keerawa/pseuds/keerawa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being an account of the adventures of a fae lost in the great city of London.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Púca

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my betas, [](http://swissmarg.livejournal.com/profile)[**swissmarg**](http://swissmarg.livejournal.com/) and [](http://luzula.livejournal.com/profile)[**luzula**](http://luzula.livejournal.com/) , and to [](http://yeomanrand.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://yeomanrand.livejournal.com/)**yeomanrand** for the prompt.  
>  This story was originally posted and intended to be read as a serial, one chapter per day. If you would like to experience it in that way, take a short break after each chapter. Make a cup of tea, take a walk, do some laundry, or just sit with the story and its characters for a few mindful breaths before moving on to the next chapter.

Once upon a time, a púca so offended Queen Mab that he was cast out of the Underhill. It matters not how or why. That’s not the tale you’ve come to hear. For the fae are story-tellers, and this story properly begins with a name.

Whisper it with me now: _Sherlock Holmes_.

Londinium had grown since the púca last visited the mortal world. It was filled with the jangle of horses and men, more men than there were stars in the firmament. Each night the púca flitted through shadows and fog thick with coal smoke to feed on the rotting carcasses of horses and cattle caught in the currents of the River Thames. Each day he went to ground in fetid alleyways, hiding from the sun beneath piles of refuse, listening as the mortals around him lived and laughed and loved and died. And so it went for many a day, and many a night, as the púca faded away.

Until one night, when the púca was roused from his stupor by the pounding of boots against cobblestones. _Wicked, wicked_ thumped the quarry’s heart; the pursuer’s pulse was a drumbeat summoning the púca to the hunt. It wasn’t safe to follow. The fog was thin, and the moon was bright, high above the city of London that night. But it was answer the call or fade to dust, so the púca picked up the trail with a howl that left the mortals of the City trembling in their beds.

Down alleys and through courts of the Rookery the púca ran, now on two feet, now on four, always gaining upon the two men until they entered a blind alley. No way out for the prey except past him. And so, no way out at all.

The huntsman was tall and lean in the shadows. Their quarry was smaller but strong, his scent thick with old blood and rage. The moon shone silver on metal in his hand - a weapon, pointed at the hunter. The púca lunged at the prey, fangs bared.

A sharp crack, like the break of an ice-bound river, and the púca knew pain. Pain, pain, cold iron buried in his shoulder. The púca shifted and scrabbled at the wound, but the iron was buried deep. He heard the harsh breaths of a struggle, a grunt, a curse. Another ear-splitting crack echoed through the alleyway. A waft of fresh blood and sulphur. A wicked heart gone still.

Sure footsteps approached. The púca should have crawled to escape in the shadows, but they were far away now, retreating across the damp cobblestones like the sea at low tide.

A leather boot prodded him in the side and the púca uncurled with a whimper of pain. A shape eclipsed the moon – the huntsman. The púca thought ‘twas not so ill an end to his story, this final hunt.

Of course, when one story ends, another begins. And so, to begin our story, the huntsman spoke these words: “My name is Sherlock Holmes. And you are the most curious creature I have ever laid eyes upon.”


	2. Sherlock Holmes

The púca awoke warm, dry, and free of pain. The iron was gone from his body. He sniffed - burning wood, ammonia, and tobacco.

The púca opened his eyes and looked about. He lay on a blanket before a fireplace in a room filled with a myriad of mysterious objects. There was a wealth of furnishings and fixtures, some familiar and some he could not name. The walls were covered in colourful paper and the floor in piles of books, a treasure trove of mortal stories and knowledge for the púca to reach out and touch.

“Ah, good, you’re awake at last.” The huntsman loomed over him, metal weapon in hand, eyes glittering with eagerness like that of a falcon diving for a rabbit. “I have already introduced myself. Might you be so good as to return the favour?”

The púca settled into a wary crouch. The huntsman, _Sherlock Holmes_ , had not harmed him. He’d tended the púca’s wounds and brought him back to his den. “This one is púca,” he answered in the speech he’d learnt by listening to the mortals of London.

Sherlock Holmes peered down at him. “Not a dumb beast after all. Intriguing. I’d thought perhaps some previously undiscovered ape or cross-species experimentation escaped from a laboratory… but with four simple words you have entirely disproven that line of reasoning, and confirmed the improbable evidence of my senses.” 

Sherlock Holmes placed the weapon out of sight above the fireplace, watching the púca for any reaction. The púca’s stance relaxed, and the man’s lips curved. “Finally, a phenomenon which merits the full exercise of my intellect,” he murmured. The man began pacing about like a hound casting for a scent until his eyes lit upon one of the piles of books from the floor. “This set of references has proven utterly useless.” He stooped to snatch them up, stalked across the room to a window, glanced out, and then threw the entire set of books out before slamming the glassed window shut to block a bellow from below. 

There was a wooden creak outside the door, then another in quick succession. The púca tilted his head and listened. A sharp knock.

“Mister Holmes, sir,” called a woman. “Will you and your guest be wanting tea?” There was a rattle at the latch, and the door began to open.

Sherlock Holmes dashed across the room, hurdling a low table in his path, and slammed the door shut. “Not now, Mrs Hudson. I fear he is not quite himself as of yet. Perhaps a hearty dinner this evening? A good joint of mutton is just what he needs to regain his strength.”

“Mutton? I would need to go out and purchase …”

“Yes. You should do so immediately, so that you may begin preparing the meal. That will be all.”

The woman muttered to herself and creaked away.

Sherlock Holmes turned, his weight still leaning upon the door he had forced shut. “My housekeeper,” he said quietly, “is both an excellent cook, and an insufferable busybody. That is the third time she has tried to get a look at you since I smuggled you into these rooms last night. Mrs Hudson is one of the few women in London steadfast enough to tolerate my experiments and eccentricities, but I suspect the sight of you would exceed even her prodigious limits, and I have neither the time nor the patience to find another servant.”

The púca rose from his crouch by the fireplace to stand on his feet, hissing with pain from his wound as he did so. He padded to the window and looked out. They were high above the ground. The leap was not impossible, but there was no cover nearby. The midday sun beat down mercilessly from the sky. The púca winced and backed blindly away from the window, blinking to regain his sight.

Sherlock Holmes was watching him, brow creased.

“Stay until sunset?” the púca asked him. “This one needs shadows to slip away.”

“An absurd suggestion,” Sherlock Holmes said, flicking the request away like a pesky fly. “I am not saying you should leave. I am recommending you change form. You are a shape shifter, yes? It is a supposition on my part, admittedly, but I did observe your transformation from a great hound into this shape in the alley. Unless the hound was an illusion, a glamour of some kind?”

“No, the hound is true,” the púca said.

“Well then. You have changed into this shape, which is humanoid, if still distinctly inhuman. And I know that your current form is a real, physical body. I did cut a bullet out of your shoulder, after all. Your flesh reacted to a cheap iron round as if it were muriatic acid. A most singular effect that merits further study.”

The púca stiffened, claws extending instinctively at the threat. 

Sherlock Holmes noted the púca’s reaction with a raised eyebrow. “Or not, if you prefer. In any case, if you are able to take the form of a man, púca, I would implore you to do so, that we might both enjoy the lovely dinner which Mrs Hudson will be preparing for us.”

No threat here, the púca decided, beyond the burden of guest-right. Sherlock Holmes offered shelter and food, and the púca found himself yearning for it, for the warmth of this mortal’s hearth. What he asked for in return was … difficult. Three forms a púca might take: horse and hound and hands. Hands was a useful form, good for carving and singing and the writing of runes. Yet it was not that of a man. Sherlock Holmes towered above the púca, tail-less, with no fur at all except to thatch the very peak of his head.

It might be possible. The púca remembered when he was young, twisting his form to find the one that felt true. Taking the shape of a bay stallion, a white mare, a war mount with a wide back and blade-sharp hooves. He closed his eyes and reached for that unsettled state. He thought of the mortals in the streets, of Sherlock Holmes. Bones stretched and shifted; his shoulder burned with a fresh agony as the wound distorted. The púca teetered like a new-born colt on long, straight legs and felt the air drift cool across bare skin.

He opened his eyes to find Sherlock Holmes near enough to touch, eyes flickering over the púca’s form with rapt attention. “Good?” the púca asked.

Sherlock Holmes stepped back with a fierce shake of the head. “Not good. That is no use at all. You cannot possibly walk about the city like that. You would frighten children in the streets.”

The púca shrank in on himself. “Never tried,” he said. “First time in mortal form.”

Sherlock Holmes brightened. “Is it really? In that case, I assume you would welcome my suggestions, yes? Now, where to begin? What is most likely to draw unwanted attention?” He paced away, and then whirled round, immediately focusing on the púca’s face. “Ah. The human pupil is round, not a vertical slit. The iris should be coloured in shades of blue or brown. Green is an acceptable variant.”

The púca had never noticed such details. He considered the eyes of men, and twisted. When he opened his eyes, Sherlock Holmes nodded. 

“Much better. Your fingers are twice as long as those of a man, and you appear to have an extra joint.” Sherlock Holmes held up his own hands as exemplars. They displayed a multitude of tiny scars from cuts and burns, the mark of an alchemist. “My own hands represent the upper extreme of normality,” he said. “Most men’s fingers are both shorter and broader.”

The púca re-shaped his hands to fit. They were stiffer this way, and less agile, but mortals seemed to manage well enough.

“Excellent. Now, your clavicle, or rather, your lack of clavicle, is a problem.”

The púca squinted at Sherlock Holmes. “‘Clavicle’?”

“Yes, the clavicle, the collarbone. It is –” Sherlock Holmes’ hands flew to the buttons of his garment, then stopped. “Wait.” 

He spun about and strode across the room, pulling a fat, leather-bound book from a shelf. He laid it on top of a stack of books. The stack teetered. Sherlock Holmes grimaced and retrieved the book from its unstable perch. He cast his eye over the heavily-laden table top, shook his head, and then laid the book carefully upon the floor, prostrating himself on the carpet before it and opening the volume to a specific page.

“Vesalius’s _De humani corporis fabrica_ ,” he said reverently, beckoning to the púca. “Come see what I mean about the clavicle. Can you read? No? We’ll need to address that immediately. English and Latin to start, of course. Then French and Italian.”

The púca collapsed awkwardly to his knees, jarring the wounded shoulder, and brushed short fingers across the page of the book. There was a picture of a human body, all flesh removed, revealing the bones underneath. This was a treasure indeed. 

“Magnificent, is it not?” Sherlock Holmes breathed. “It was published in 1543. The physiology is out-dated, but the anatomical detail of the woodcuts is breath-taking.”

That a man might, in one brief candle-flame of a mortal lifetime, amass such knowledge and then gift it to the rest of his kind in this way, to be passed from hand to hand through the generations, studied and added to … there was a power to it, a stubborn will to learn and grow and become that the púca had never seen among the fae.

They pored over the volumes for hours, Sherlock Holmes pointing out tiny discrepancies between the woodcuts and the púca’s form that they might be remedied. Once he could find no fault in the púca’s anatomy, Sherlock Holmes covered him in many layers of mortal garb, and seemed most pleased with the effect.

“Now, ‘Púca’,” the man said. “Is that your name, your title, your species, or a description of your current state?”

The púca considered. “Not a name,” he said. 

“Well, you must have a name. I shall call you Watson,” Sherlock Holmes declared. “Doctor John Watson.”

The púca growled, deep in his chest. Only the Queen could grant a name, the greatest of boons. He had never earned one. Never would.

Sherlock Holmes showed his teeth. “After all, _he_ certainly has no further need of a name. And the man had neither family nor any intimates who might gainsay its appropriation. ”

The man? Their prey? The púca edged forward. Only the Queen could grant a name, yes, but a huntsman had the ancient right to bestow the spoils of the hunt. Rack, liver, pelt … name?

“Yes, that should work out nicely. Watson was a retired army surgeon. Very respectable, if one failed to note his more unsavoury habits. And he was a survivor of the Battle of Maiwand. That should go far in explaining your wound, as well as any, hmm, peculiarities in your manner.”

That settled, Sherlock Holmes dropped into a chair. He picked up a pipe and began methodically filling the bowl with tobacco.

The púca whispered the name to himself; tasted it on his tongue. Watson. Doctor John Watson. A healer. A fighter. A survivor. Yes.

It was too much. Sherlock Holmes did not understand the gift he had given the púca, and so would not claim fair recompense. The púca, _Watson_ , could not in honour leave this debt between them. He rose to his feet, crossing his wrists in a way that would convey gratitude to one of his own kind.

“You removed the iron,” he began. “Saved this one – saved my life. Gave me a name. A debt is owed.”

Sherlock Holmes lit his pipe and puffed on it contemplatively, eyes distant, tapping the bowl from time to time. The púca waited patiently as the smoke drifted across the room. 

The man abruptly refocused on him, scent sharpening. “The shot was originally intended for me. However, if it is your nature to abhor a debt…” He leant forward. “I have been compared to a hound, set upon the wolves of this great city. You would be uniquely qualified to serve as my assistant.”

The púca snarled; outraged that a mortal should think him so easily bound. 

Sherlock Holmes did not retreat, but laid the pipe down to study him, gnawing anxiously on his lip as he awaited the púca’s answer.

The púca tested the air. Sherlock Holmes’s scent held neither cruelty nor greed. It was a pure, childlike curiosity. Sherlock Holmes had discovered a mystery, in the form of one exiled fae, and he yearned to explore it in the same way a lesser mortal might crave food, or wealth, or power.

The evening shadows had grown long and thick. The púca could escape to them now, leaving this warm hearth, and promised meal, and gifted name behind. Leaving Sherlock Holmes. Or he could stay.

“Assistant,” Watson said. “I could be that.”

Sherlock Holmes took a breath.

“For a time,” Watson cautioned him.

“For a time,” Sherlock Holmes agreed quickly. He leapt to his feet, as if the energy within him could no longer be contained, and darted across the room to throw open the door. “Mrs Hudson,” he bellowed down the stairs that were revealed. “Where is our dinner? Doctor Watson has agreed to stay on as my assistant!”


	3. Holmes

Years passed. The púca learnt to pass as a man; as Doctor Watson, assistant to Sherlock Holmes. 

The mortal form I had taken flourished on a diet of Mrs Hudson’s cooking. Holmes fed the fae in me on honey of the bee, milk of the cow, and (now and again) the blood of the wicked. 

We hunted murderers and thieves, slavers and blackmailers through the streets of London. I captured the stories of our hunts in written form and published them, so that Sherlock Holmes’ name might be known and remembered. So that our prey might fear us. 

Once we followed a rumour of a great hound stalking men upon the moor. Holmes was more disappointed than I when we discovered it was mere human malice masquerading as the supernatural. He questioned me unendingly about my origins, but I had not the words to speak of it. My memories of the Underhill, of what I had once been, faded as surely as snow in the spring.

As Holmes aged, I took care to match him, allowing my form to grey, and slow, and stoop, like over-ripe fruit left to rot on the vine. In time we retired to Sussex. Holmes kept hives of bees and corresponded with the constabulary of London via letters, solving their most difficult cases with brilliant logic and a full tithe of insults.

One day, he did not rise from his bed for our usual morning tea and ramble. When I looked in upon him, Holmes was bundled in his blankets. His face was flushed with fever; his breathing was ragged and laboured. This illness had inconvenienced many in the local village. I had tended to a few of the very young and the aged who required my medical expertise. I had not considered that I might carry the malady home with me.

“My dear Watson,” Holmes greeted me before pausing for breath. “No … I should say, rather, my dear púca.” I flinched at this, my name taken back. “I do believe I have come to the end of our adventures,” he continued.

I shook my head in denial, stooping by his bedside to take hold of Holmes’ wrist. It was a habit I had acquired in my years as a physician, an acceptable touch, comforting to my patients if not medically necessary. I could hear Holmes’ pulse clearly enough, limping and phlegmatic in his chest. The room held the sickly-sweet stench of mortality. 

“If I may ask,” he said, and then was interrupted by a vicious cough that made his heart race and brought a froth of blood to his lips. I wiped his lips with my handkerchief, and he nodded his thanks. “Might I see you in your original shape?” he requested.

I could refuse him nothing. I’d first met Holmes in form of a hound, and so I stripped out of my layers of clothing and let myself slip into that shape. The shift was slow and strange and painful after so many years as a man.

He turned his head to examine me. “I had forgotten the gold of your eyes,” he said finally. He took a breath and let it out. Holmes’ next words had the cadence of a prepared speech. “Over the years, you have proven yourself an invaluable assistant and a dear friend. You have more than repaid your debt to me, púca, and I hereby release you.”

Had I been in human form, I might have laughed. A debt might hold a púca for a moon, an oath for a season. I stayed with Sherlock Holmes because he was the best and brightest star in the mortal sky. I had chosen him. He was mine; I was his.

“Go on, then,” Holmes said. I edged closer to the bed to scent his breath. He feebly pushed my head aside. “Leave, damn you,” he said in a voice raw from the cough. “You are free!”

Setting aside mortal restraint with my mortal form, I leapt onto the bed and curled up beside him. 

He startled, the movement setting off another violent coughing spree. When it was over, he whispered, “Loyal to the end. I should have realised. Perhaps …” He trailed off.

I nudged my head under his hand. Holmes began to pet me, his hand running through my pelt, over and over. He did not speak again. There we stayed through the day and much of the night, as Holmes fought for each breath. I wished I could battle by his side once more; sink my fangs into Death before it could take him from me. 

When his breath and heart were gone to silence, I let out a great howl. It echoed from hills and homes. There was no one to howl with me. I escaped across the downs into the forest, far from anything that might remind me of him.

The world of men lost all savour once Sherlock Holmes left it, and me, behind. Now that my eyes had been opened, I could not help but see the grief that stalked each mortal from the moment of their birth until their inevitable end. I believed that to care for one of them was an error I would never fall prey to again. 

I was wrong.


	4. Young Master Holmes

The snows came and went, came and went in a monotonous whirl and I felt myself fading away. A mortal girl became lost in my forest. I led her home. She became a wife, and then a mother, whilst I watched. Her husband left, gone to soldier. I had been a soldier once. No, not I – Watson. Holmes had taken that name back, had he not? The wife was a widow, now. She raised her children and grand-children to show me respect. I helped the family – brought firewood in the depths of winter, herded their sheep away from the bogs, mucked out the barn and scared off the wicked boy who would take a young girl’s virtue. In return they remembered the púca in their prayers and always left a bowl of milk outside the barn for me. It was a thin diet of habit, rather than true belief; barely enough for a púca to survive upon. Yet survival was all I had.

Until one day, when I heard a name whispered on the wind. _Sherlock Holmes_. I listened closely. ‘Twas not just one of my old stories, his name being read and remembered. No. This was a living mortal’s true name, spoken with love. I followed the scent of it past villages grown to great cities, across roads black with cold tar and thick with roaring horseless carriages. I slipped through shadows grown sparse in the strange bright lights of this new world.

There were manor lands that tasted of him, a great house, a babe with sparse dark curls asleep in an elaborate cot.

“Is it really you, Sherlock Holmes?” I asked the infant, as moonlight cast my shadow over him. “Is it only your name reborn here, or your spirit as well?” The little one stirred in his sleep, but did not answer me. I breathed in his scent, a sweet mix of mother’s milk and innocence. It was enticing. Suddenly I understood those fae who stole babes away from their mortal families. I allowed myself to imagine it, just for a moment. Taking this tiny Sherlock Holmes with me to raise as my own. But, no. I’d no teats to feed a babe. No knowledge to feed Holmes’ hungry mind. The trip here had proven me ignorant of the mortal world. And I’d no right. My Sherlock Holmes had invited me into his life. This little one had not. 

“If you need me, I shall come,” I promised, and left him to his family.

I returned to my forest. It was much reduced from what I had once known; fields and roads had devoured it bit by bit over the years without my notice. I was restless, my senses keen. I had drifted through the years, but now I felt the passage of each day. Was the babe well? Was he truly my Sherlock Holmes reborn? Was today the day he would call for me? 

I paid close attention to the farmer girl’s descendants, listening to their conversations, the music they played upon the radio, and the stories that played out like a seer’s magic on their television. The fledgling medico-legal science Holmes had nourished with his countless monographs had raced ahead like a stampeding carriage. Aeroplanes allowed men to fly like birds, faster than the speed of sound. Mortal men had walked upon the face of the moon. Mary Shelley’s gothic novel had proven prophetic, as surgeons replaced men’s diseased or damaged organs with those harvested from fresh corpses. I had once read in journals about the successful trials of aspirin to reduce fever and pain. Now they had vaccines to prevent and medicines to cure illnesses that I had seen claim the lives of dozens of men, women, and children under my care.

I wanted it. I wanted it all. I wanted to know, and do, and be, everything that this mortal world had to offer. And that was when, at long last, I heard the call. Tonight. Now. Sherlock Holmes needed me. I leapt from shadow to shadow with a speed I had not approached since the Underhill.

The boy was pale and slim, with wild dark hair. He lay on his back in the grass behind the stables, eyes squeezed fiercely shut. The moonlight turned the tears slipping down the side of his face into precious gems.

I tried to take the form of a man, but I had avoided it for too long, its every whisker and pore a bitter reminder of him. The shape felt strange and clumsy now, the joints all wrong. I remembered Holmes saying, ‘You would frighten children in the streets.’ I had no desire to frighten this child, so I took my hands form. It was smaller and should be less threatening to a boy. I crouched down beside him. “Young Master Holmes?”

The boy threw himself upright, face twisted in fury, then confusion. I expected the boy to bolt, but instead he stepped closer, eyes flicking over every inch of my form. “You sound like a servant,” he said, voice high and imperious, “but you look … what _are_ you?”

“Púca,” I answered, wondering if I should have taken on some approximation of human form, instead.

The boy walked in a circle around me, just outside of arm’s reach. I stood still, but felt my tail curl anxiously between my legs. “My nanny told stories about things like you,” the boy said from behind me, scent rich with a heady curiosity. “Mummy fired her for talking rubbish.”

Holmes finished his inspection and stood in front of me again, staring up at me, just a touch shorter than I in this form. “Why are you here on the estate?” he demanded.

“You needed me,” I answered.

“I don’t need anyone,” the boy snapped instantly, and I would have believed him if I’d not seen the tears.

“I can see you do not need a person,” I suggested carefully, “but perhaps you need a púca?”

“Why? What’s a púca for?”

I considered. I had been a sheep-herder, a wood-cutter, and a guard dog in past years. But none of that was my true purpose. A Boswell, an assistant, a friend to the most brilliant mortal I’d ever met – that’s what I was for. “Oh, púcas are very useful for all sorts of things,” I assured the young Holmes.

“I suppose you could help me with my experiments,” the boy conceded. “What would you need in return?” he asked.

“In return?” 

“Yes, I assume there’s some sort of deal to be made? I can’t give you any clothing,” young Holmes said. “I remember that from the stories, although why I’d want to, I’ve no idea. Everyone wears clothing; it’s very boring. Your fur is far more interesting.”

This ‘deal’ would make things easier, I decided. “First, you must keep my existence a secret.”

The boy nodded. “Easy enough. Now Mycroft’s gone off to school”- and there was something guarded in his tone- “there’s no one left who might deduce you. What else?”

“You need to teach me all about the modern world.” I had sleep-walked through the years since Sherlock Holmes had gone where I could not follow, and the world had changed profoundly during my period of abstraction. There was so much to learn.

“Well, I can try,” Holmes mumbled, “but it’s not my fault if you’re not clever enough to keep up.” He froze as if suddenly realising he’d spoken aloud, and glanced at me uncertainly.

The boy reminded me of my own Sherlock Holmes, when I had forced the man to explain the chemical apparatus that stained his fingers and scarred every horizontal surface in our home. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Oooh, you’ve got dog’s teeth,” the boy exclaimed, standing on tip-toe for a better view. “Open your mouth and show me the rest.”

“Later,” I promised.

“Fine,” the boy said sulkily, sinking back down to his normal height. “What’s your third condition?”

“Hmm?”

“There are always three, right? So what is it?”

“Oh,” I said, a bit flustered. There should be three. Was that true? Or was it from the tomes of fairy lore Holmes had collected over the years? “You must leave out a saucer of milk for me every night before you go to bed,” I said. The farmer girl’s family had always done that as a sign of respect.

“Milk?” said the young Holmes sceptically. “With those teeth?”

“It’s traditional,” I told him firmly. “And I’ve always liked milk, Master Holmes.”

“Agreed!” He held out his hand. We shook on it like gentlemen. “And you ... you can call me Sherlock,” he offered.

It was shockingly intimate, even when addressing so young a boy. But I quite liked the idea.

“That I shall, Sherlock.”

Sherlock smiled at me. “Now sit down and open your mouth so I can examine your teeth,” he ordered.

I sank down onto my haunches and allowed my mouth to gape open. I could hear his heart, the quick pulse of an excited boy. My own heart thrummed in time; I was alive in a way I hadn’t felt since last I had a Sherlock Holmes of my own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Larktag has posted a delightful illustration of the púca meeting Young Master Holmes on [tumblr](http://larktag.tumblr.com/post/37384544969/sherlock-meets-a-puca-from-a-story-of-names-by)


	5. Sherlock

I brought Sherlock leaves just changing colour and icicles from the very top of the manor house so he could compare them to those that had formed at ground level. I pulled him through the shadows with me to examine cocooned butterflies all across the parish. When the maid’s bitch whelped a litter of stillborn pups, I showed him how to dissect them and find what had gone wrong in their tiny bodies. We explored every pond, stream, hillock, and barrow within Sherlock’s domain. I fetched the boy sulphur and saltpetre, and then whisked him to safety when he blew out a corner of the stables. I popped his dislocated shoulder back into joint and assured him that even the bravest of soldiers would cry when so injured.

In return, Sherlock mocked my anachronisms until I mastered the intricacies of modern speech. He taught me about DNA and computers, neurons and the power of the atom. I refused to believe his tale of Hiroshima until he showed me a book in the manor’s library which documented the – I will not call it a battle. It was a judgment, like a plague or storm that the Queen would have called to destroy all in her path. I spent a day locked in the library reading histories of the times and places that young men had bled for Queen and Country in the years I’d let slip away. When Sherlock found me there, weeping, he demanded that I tell him what was wrong. I had no words for him. He climbed into the chair beside me and curled up there to read and re-read the book I held in my lap, as fiercely as if he searched for an enemy in its pages.

The summer was nearly over when Sherlock summoned me to his bedroom. “We’re leaving,” he announced angrily, tossing me a rucksack. I sniffed it – the bag held clothing, a few items of food, the money Sherlock kept hidden under his mould experiment, and his Swiss Army knife. 

“What’s happened?”

“Mummy’s trying to send me to boarding school. I told her I wouldn’t go, and she locked me in my room like a misbehaving child!” His voice cracked on the last word.

“Boarding school? But … that should be years away! Mycroft didn’t go to boarding school until –”

“Well apparently Mycroft wasn’t such a disappointment to her,” Sherlock spat at me.

“Disappointment?”

Sherlock shot me the look that meant I was being very stupid indeed. “The usual.” He spoke in a mocking soprano, “‘You must attend the lessons with your tutors, Sherlock.’ ‘Why haven’t you any friends, Sherlock?’ ‘You disappear for days at a time. Where do you go, Sherlock?’ Days. Hah! Mummy must have no reasonable argument at all, to resort to hyperbole.”

“Wait. You don’t have any friends?”

Sherlock began pacing about the room. “Why would I need _friends_ when I have you, púca? Now, the car will be here to pick me up first thing in the morning, so we’ll need to be gone long before then –”

“No.” Sherlock had no friends. Of course he didn’t. He spent all his time with me.

“I know it’s difficult for you to pull me into the shadows with you, but once we’re off the estate I can walk. There’s that abandoned mill five kilometres to the southeast. We’ll hide there during the day, and then catch a ride on a freight train headed to London. You’ve seen how they slow down there, at the embankment. It should be quite easy to hop on board.”

“No,” I snarled.

Sherlock turned to me, startled. “What do you mean, no?”

“No, you are not going to London. You are going to boarding school. And I…” This was my fault. I’d thought Sherlock would draw me into the sunlit world, but instead I’d carried him with me into the twilight. Gone for days on our little adventures? I’d not noticed the passage of time, a sign I’d lost touch with the mortal world. What truly worried me was that Sherlock hadn’t noticed it either. “I’m leaving, Sherlock.”

Sherlock took a single step towards me, then stopped. “We made a deal!” he screeched.

Oh, Sherlock Holmes. You never had any idea of what keeps me by your side, did you? “We did,” I said. “And when’s the last time you left out a saucer of milk for me?”

Sherlock paled. It had been months. For a minute neither of us said a word. We stared at each other, eye to eye. The boy had grown to match my height. 

“Fine,” he snapped, and the silence shattered around us like glass. “I’ll have no use for a stupid púca at boarding school, anyway. I imagine boys will be queuing up for the privilege of helping with my experiments.”

He began unpacking his rucksack with shaking hands.

“Sherlock, I will come back. And if you ever need me -”

“I won’t,” he interrupted coldly, turning away from me and opening his closet door. He grabbed an armful of clothes and hangars and chucked them onto the bed. Sherlock glared at me, heart pounding, his body in tight lines of fury. “Leave then, since that’s what you want,” he said. “I’ve got a lot to do to get ready for school.”

I crept away into the shadows, and I left him. I had to. 

I _had_ to. Because if I didn’t, I would take him with me. I would be just a púca lost in the shadows, and Sherlock lost with me, and that wasn’t what I wanted for either of us. 

He’d named me Doctor John Watson once, and then taken it back. Fair enough. I hadn’t earned it, not then. But I would. I would become a man, a soldier and a doctor, in this bright new world the mortals had built. Someday, we would meet again. He would be bold and brilliant and at the height of his powers. And I would once again be Sherlock Holmes’ assistant and his friend. Someday.


	6. Doctor John Watson

I stood in the gents’ of the late-night Chinese restaurant Sherlock had found for us, washing my hands as thoroughly as if scrubbing in for surgery, in order to remove the powder residue from the gunshot that had saved his life. I looked in the mirror at the worry lines, smile lines, and battle scars that I’d collected over the years. I nodded. Doctor John Watson, indeed.

“Right,” I said as I returned to the table, continuing our earlier conversation. “That’s settled then. I agree to pay my half of the rent on time, to assist you at crime scenes, and to do my best to keep you from getting yourself killed. And in return you’ll pay your half of the rent on time, and keep the top shelf and left crisper in the fridge free of all human tissue.” There should be three conditions, shouldn’t there? I couldn’t resist. “Also, you must buy me a pint of milk each and every day.”

Sherlock, who had been lazing in the red upholstered booth like a cat in the sun, sat bolt upright. “A pint of milk?”

“Will that be a problem?”

“Not necessarily,” he said, eyes flickering over me as he tried to deduce the root of this unexpected demand. “Milk. Why milk, John?” Suspicion dawned in his eyes. “Did Mycroft put you up to this?” he demanded.

I huffed. “Of course not. We all have our little quirks. Some of us like to play the violin while thinking, and others like to have their flat-mate buy a pint of milk for them every day. Do we have a deal, Sherlock?”

Sherlock leaned across the table to study me intently, gathering what clues I couldn’t imagine. He took a sharp breath, and I heard his pulse quicken. He nodded, a sudden grin lighting his face like fire catching in the hearth. Then Sherlock held out his hand, and we shook on it like gentlemen. 

> To: DeliverMilk.co.uk  
>  From: sh@thescienceofdeduction.co.uk  
> 
> 
> Order: One pint of milk to be delivered daily to 221B Baker Street London, NW1 6XE, without fail. Holidays included. Cost no object. Order to begin immediately and continue until further notice.


End file.
